Most of the images Ed Ribinskas has made of the former Nickel Plate Road trestle over the Grand River in Painesville were made at the east end of the bridge.
He stayed away from the west end for several years to avoid trespassing on the property of Coe Manufacturing. Another factor was that it would be a tight shot because of tree growth that dated back to the end of the steam locomotive era.
After Coe Manufacturing closed and its building were razed, Ed felt more comfortable scouting for photo angles at the west end.
Nonetheless, it was still a tight shot. The best time of year to photograph the west end of the trestle was during the winter.
“Probably the very few times I photographed there resulted in my best and favorites,” Ed wrote.
The bottom two photographs were made of westbound manifest freight 145 at about 4:30 p.m. on Feb. 2, 2014 (Super Bowl Sunday).
With Ed that day were fellow Akron Railroad Club members Marty Surdyk and Craig Sanders.
The top two images were made in early afternoon on May 6, 2018.
Rivers are not static. They shift course and their levels rise and fall. These developments can damage bridge abutments as happened in spring 1985 when NS had to reroute some trains and issue slow orders for others until the Painesville trestle over the Grand River could be repaired (top photo).
Over time, some bridge abutments have been replaced, the results of which can be seen in the images of the Triple Crown RoadRailer trains crossing the trestle in April 1989.
The former Nickel Plate Road route between Cleveland and Buffalo never had the high level of traffic as the parallel CSX and former New York Central route, but it had its share of out-of-the ordinary sightings.
On Oct. 27, 2004, Norfolk Southern sent an Operation Lifesaver train from Rockport Yard in Cleveland to Ashtabula and back.
The encroaching vegetation is evident on the east end of the bridge as compared to what it was in the views recorded 15 years earlier.
Another unique movements that crossed the trestle was the eastbound Lake Shore Limited using the NS route due to a CSX derailment in Painesville. Amtrak Train 48 was photographed on Oct. 13, 2007.
On July 23, 2015, a large crowd of railfan photographs turned out to photograph Nickel Plate Road 2-8-2 no. 765 cross another NKP institution on a ferry move from Cleveland (Rockport Yard) to Ashtabula to be in position to pull public excursions between Ashtabula and Youngstown.
Finally, on Aug. 3, 2016, the NS business train led by F units passed through Painesville.
The Nickel Plate Road built a steel trestle over the Grand River in Painesville in 1905. It continued to stand through two changes in railroad ownership, the transition from steam to diesel power, and the end of passenger service.
But even a structure as imposing as a steel trestle is not forever. In March 2017 contractors hired by Norfolk Southern began building a new bridge largely constructed of pre-cast concrete.
That 1,318-foot structure opened to rail traffic on Sept. 30, 2018, when eastbound intermodal train 206 was the first train to use it.
The contractor then began removing the trestle, which was located north of the new bridge, and before the end of the year it was gone.
Since 2003 Ed Ribinskas has lived minutes away from the Painesville trestle. He attended Riverside High School, which was and still is a stone’s throw away from the trestle’s location.
The trestle appears in many of his railroad photographs made on the Nickel Plate Road mainline in Painesville.
This is the first of series of articles with photographs showing how the environment around the trestle and rail operations on the ex-NKP mainline between Cleveland and Buffalo have changed over the years.
Today, Ed looks back to the late 1980s during the first decade of NS operation.
In that era, the trestle was mostly clear of trees and brush. The top two images are thought to be train CN 90 and were made on March 29, 1986.
The CN 90 is shown the next day in the third photograph running long hood forward, which was the usual operating practice during the Norfolk & Western era of the 1970s and 1980s.
The last photo shows Norfolk & Western Class J No. 611 headed to Erie, Pennsylvania, on a ferry move on Aug. 1, 1986.
For several years in late January or early February, I would get together with Ed Ribinskas and Marty Surdyk for a day of railfanning in Lake County. Sometimes Jeff Troutman would join us.
We would spend much of the day on the CSX Erie West Subdivision and the Lake Erie District of Norfolk Southern in and near Perry.
This being Northeast Ohio, we always expected winter weather. By that I mean snow. But not every year saw bountiful snow on the ground despite Lake County being in a region of Ohio known for heavy snow.
During a few of those outings, the day was dark and dreary with little evidence of the beauty of winter.
That was not the case, though, during our outing of Feb. 2, 2014.
Overnight it had rained and then snow fell as the temperatures dropped.
The wet conditions meant that snow clung to just about everything in sight and pretty much stayed that way all day.
The result was one of the best winter railfanning outings I’ve ever had.
Several image from that day I’ve posted on this site before and Marty has shown during Akron Railroad Club programs some of the slides he made that day.
Ed won a monthly “best photograph” contest at Dodd Camera and received a free framed enlargement of that image that he has hanging on a wall of the dining room of his house.
That winning image was made late in the afternoon of westbound NS manifest freight 145 crossing the trestle over the Grand River in Painesville.
Last week I was rummaging through some of my digital file folders from early 2014 when I came across the images I made on Feb. 2.
Much to my surprise, I’ve only posted a few of those images on my Flickr page.
So I spent a couple days selecting and processing in Photoshop some images that had never been processed.
Shown above is a three-image sequence of the 145 crossing the now replaced Grand River trestle.
We were standing just beyond the west end of the bridge with all of us taking slightly different angles. What I liked about this series is how each image offers a different perspective.
The sequence begins with the train approaching the trestle from the east end, which captures that sense of anticipation that something memorable is about to happen.
It continues with an image of the train about halfway across the trestle and offers that compressed view common with images made with a telephoto lens.
The final image is what many would consider the money shot. Ed won the photo contest with an image similar to this one.
The train has reached the west edge of the bridge but is not yet off of it. The image combines the elements of a close train with a wide scenic view in a sort of convergence.
When I originally processed that image nearly eight years ago I converted it to black and white. There wasn’t much color in the scene and the conditions just seemed to say “black and white world.”
But after working with the image in color I decided it looks good in that form, too.
This day was one of the very few times I ever photographed NS operations on the Painesville trestle at the west end. I have numerous images from the east end, but rarely sought to do the west end.
The trestle had been built decades earlier by the Nickel Plate Road and was one of those structures that was always there even though ownership of the railroad changed to Norfolk & Western and then to Norfolk Southern.
It was always there even after the steam locomotives were retired, after the passenger trains were discontinued and after one generation of diesel locomotives had made way for another.
Generations of railroaders hired out and later retired after having crossed this bridge countless times during their long careers.
And then, so it seemed, one day the trestle was gone, replaced by a bridge that seems nondescript by comparison.
When viewed in this context, I’m even more pleased that we took the time in 2014 to get the photographs that we did of the 145 crossing the trestle.
Interestingly, that day was the only time I ever photographed an NS train crossing the trestle from ground level. But that is a story for another day.
Marty Surdyk, Craig Sanders and myself had a super bowl hours before the NFL game started on February 2, 2014.. All of our photos from that day were all keepers thanks to the unique weather conditions from that day. I miss seeing the “late” former Nickel Plate Road trestle every time I see Norfolk Southern train 206 in the top photo. Seeing NS train 145 in the middle and bottom images always brings a smile to my face.
Maybe you’ve seen my photograph of the Central of Georgia No. 8101 of Norfolk Southern that I made on May 6, 2018, at west end of the old Nickel Plate Road trestle over the Grand River in Painesville.
I’m pretty sure No. 8101 was leading train 287 at 1:50 p.m. I always loved that photo because the lighting was absolutely perfect and it showed the new bridge under construction.
On Monday the 8101 showed up pulling Train 316 en route to Buffalo, New York, just after 6 p.m. on a gloomy Monday.
It wasn’t as clean as it was when I got it a couple years ago yet I still enjoyed seeing it.
The rails have been removed and a crane is removing the deck of the old trestle over the Grand River in Painesville. The view is looking westward from Riverside Drive.
Norfolk Southern is wasting no time in removing the 1905 trestle over the Grand River in Painesville following the opening on Sept. 30 of a new bridge.
Work on the new bridge began in March 2017 and the first train to use the structure was eastbound intermodal train 206.
The bridge is part of the NS mainline between Cleveland and Buffalo, New York.
Photographs by Edward Ribinskas
The old and the new as seen from river level.
A view looking eastward toward both bridges from Bank Street.
Looking west from Bank Street on the west side of the new and old bridges. The old alignment is on the right.
This view looking southward shows a portion of the deck of the old bridge has been removed.
Norfolk Southern opened the new bridge in Painesville over the Grand River on Sunday evening.
Akron Railroad Club member Jeff Troutman reported that the first train over the new structure was intermodal train 206, which started across at 6:58 p.m. The train had two locomotives and 45 cars.
Development of the new bridge began in March 2017. The 1,318-foot structure is supported by seven concrete pillars.
It replaces a steel trestle built in 1905 by the Nickel Plate Road that has 14 support structures and is located just north of the new bridge.
The Painesville bridge is part of the NS Lake Erie District that links Cleveland and Buffalo, New York. The line sees 10 to 15 trains per day.
I saw on Sunday morning that Norfolk Southern train 287 would have the Central of Georgia No. 8101 leading.
Before I went to church in the morning I saw that it was in the Buffalo, New York, area so I was able to attend mass then come home for an update.
After I got home the next post was North East, Pennsylvania, at 9:56 a.m. I figured under normal circumstances it would show around 11:30 a.m. It obviously was held in Conneaut until 206 and 22K passed it.
Because of the delay, the lighting was perfect at 1:50 p.m. at the west end of the Painesville trestle over the Grand River.
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